{{B}}How to Run a Meeting{{/B}}
Their appointment as committee chairman takes people in different ways. Some seize the opportunity to impose their Will on a group that they see themselves licensed to dominate. Others are more like scoutmasters, for{{U}} (31) {{/U}}the collective activity of the group is satisfactory enough, with no need for achievement. And{{U}} (32) {{/U}}are the insecure or lazy chairmen who look to the meeting for reassurance and support in their ineffectiveness and inactivity,{{U}} (33) {{/U}}that they can spread the responsibility for their indecisiveness{{U}} (34) {{/U}}the whole group.
But even the large majority who{{U}} (35) {{/U}}not go to those extremes still feel a pleasurable tumescence of the ego when they take their place at the head of the table{{U}} (36) {{/U}}the first time. The feeling is{{U}} (37) {{/U}}sin: the sin is to indulge in it or to assume that the pleasure is shared by the other members of the meeting.
It is the chairman's self-indulgence that is the greatest single barrier to the success of a meeting. His first duty, then, is to be aware of the temptation and of the dangers of yielding{{U}} (38) {{/U}}it. The clearest of the danger signals is hearing himself talking a lot during a discussion. There is, in fact, only{{U}} (39) {{/U}}legitimate source of pleasure in chairmanship, and that is pleasure in the achievements of the meeting — and to be legitimate, it must be shared by all those present. Meetings are necessary for all sorts of basic and primitive human reasons, but they are useful only if they{{U}} (40) {{/U}}seen by all present to be getting somewhere — and somewhere they know they could not have gotten to individually.